About Kirk Lennon

If you clicked here, then you either read an article I wrote and were so interested in it that you wanted to know more about the author, or you just searched for my name because you want to hire me, or you just think I’m a cool person. In any event, thanks. I’ll give you some random facts about myself:

I grew up in Texas.

I lived in Changchun, China for over a year, teaching English.

I now live in Seattle.

How to contact

You can always email me at kirklennon@me.com. I’m pretty good about responding to email quickly. You can also find me on Twitter as, unsurprisingly, @kirklennon.

By visitor request, I now also have an RSS feed, so you never miss out on a new article. Subscribe to RSS Feed.

Questions I imagine people might ask:

Is this an Apple blog?

No, it’s a place for me to write about whatever I want to write about. It’s also not actually a blog either.

This is brilliant. Why don’t you write more?

This isn’t my day job.

Where’s your day job?

It’s downtown.

How did you make this site?

With my own two hands. I wrote the code in the very excellent
TextWrangler.

Why isn’t my question on your list?

Because this is a list only of questions I imagined people might ask, not
real questions. Send me an email.

Stuff I’m currently boycotting:

Bigots:

Chick-fil-A

Hobby Lobby

Duck Dynasty

Barilla pasta

Thieves, and otherwise just bad journalists

Huffington Post

Gizmodo

The rest of Gawker Media

Questions that I have very strong opinions about:

What’s the proper plural of “octopus”?

“Octopuses.” It’s definitely not, under any circumstances, “octopi,” which comes from a misguided comparison to common Latin words such as “alumnus,” the plural of which is “alumni.” Because “octopus” isn’t a Latin word; it’s Greek. The Greek plural is “octopodes,” but this is insufferably pedantic and shouldn’t really be used, even in scientific contexts. The only acceptable plural in English is “octopuses.”

How many spaces go after a period?

One. Just one. Never two.

Should I use superscript ordinals?

This question is about the -st, -nd, -rd, or -th on the end of ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th). When Microsoft made Word, they set a bizarre default that takes these endings and makes them superscript (a little smaller and a little higher). On any new installation of Office, you should immediately turn this “feature” off. It’s wrong. Think I’m wrong? Open a book. Literally, any book. Find an ordinal number. See? It’s in the normal size and written on the baseline. All professionally typeset text uses baseline ordinals; superscripts are for amateurs who don’t know better. You know better now.